The following synopses will give you a vivid picture of what the partnership of Sydney Jordan and Wille Patterson achieved:
Immortal Toys
'The Immortal Toys' (1961) - a strange tale of an alien child's death, revealed by the youngster's powerful toys found scattered around the world and leading to a hidden tomb in Burma.
Chacondar
'Chacondar!' (1970) - another haunting story in which the spirit of the Mona Lisa pursues Jeff from the Moon base to the National Portrait Gallery, London.
'Sitting Tenants' (1972) - reveals the great god Pan as the guardian of our planet rescuing the human race from the ambitions of an alien estate agent!
Jordan recalls another story written by Patterson called 'Rip van Haddow' (1963). In one seamless sweep he took us from the days of pre-war flying to the evidence of supersonic flight and on to sub-orbital travel.
Anti-Gravity Man
'Anti-Gravity Man' (1965) was a wonderfully eccentric take on Man's first steps into space when it becomes clear that one enterprising Englishman had beaten the competition and already landed on the Moon - in a Mini Cooper!
The Day the Moon Nearly Exploded
The Day the Moon Nearly Exploded' (1969)- This tale reflects the current uncertainty at the time as to just what lethal phenomena might be lurking out in space, ready to destroy the importunate creatures from the blue planet who dared to leave Earth’s protective atmosphere.
Strange Ship
'Strange Ship' (1969)- A story of malevolent violence. Jeff, physicist Jill Holywood and the Moonbase personnel are threatened by aliens who regard the Earthlings chance discovery of their Black Box Recorder as an act of aggression.
Daughter of Eros
'Daughter of Eros' (1969)- the Goblinesque aliens from a distant planet called Belk-Narr had built a fifth column invasion base on the asteroid Eros but they had to select a female from their ranks who could pass as a human. Her mission was to seduce Jeff Hawke who was in charge of Earth’s plans to explore Eros.
First Person Plural
‘First Person Plural’ (1974)- the last strip. An elemental presence takes ‘possession’ of a young woman and restores her sanity. Jeff is indebted to her for saving Mac’s life. Little did Jordan know that the strip would come to an abrupt end without warning. He used the ‘ Shining Ones’ from Jeff Hawke’s first adventure to bring the twenty year saga to an acceptable finale.
Heir Apparent
‘Heir Apparent’ (1975)- The idea of showing aliens in a domestic situation has always appealed Sydney Jordan. His Excellency retires to his country estate but unfortunately some domestic problems arise…
Lance McLane / Jeff Hawke
In 1974 the Daily Express cancelled the Jeff Hawke strip. The Scottish Daily Record published Sydney Jordan’s new creation, a Scots hero called Lance McLane . It appeared in The Daily Record for twelve years ad was adapted by the Daily Express in 1977 - renamed Jeff Hawke.
Having escaped the cosmic disaster which has turned Earth into a world of ice, Hawke’s new persona and the three great starships are now the sole link with Mans’ outposts in space and in the isolated enclaves on the home planet.
Hawke/ McLane is Surgeon Commander on board the vessel Hope.
From Sydney Jordan we have come to expect and receive science fiction impressive in atmosphere and characterisation. His past work is noted for these two facets, elements perhaps easier to put into a novel than a daily strip.
His feeling for space, the mystery and majesty of it, come over well, as do the people and machines. The high standards of creative workmanship at the heart of the early days of JEFF HAWKE were carried on by younger artists like Paul Neary who brought his own dynamic and graphic linework to the strip.
Paul is responsible for much of the finished art on Last Frontier and Angel of Mercy, the two opening stories in the Hawke/McLane saga. Sydney discovered some time ago that heavy pressures can quickly overtake a man when he is both writing and drawing. He continued to write the yarns and lay out the strips, while Paul handled much of the artwork. That Paul shares with Sydney the same feeling for Sci-Fi, can easily be verified by a quick check on his work on 'Noon Zero Two’ in issue 5 of House of Hammer. The strip ran in the Daily Record for 12 years and latterly Theyen Rich, a brilliant young artist and confirmed Punk at the time (!) brought an Eighties feel to the artwork, which helped to make the story subtly iconoclastic ...
In spite of the hero being a surgeon, the stories are pure adventure with medicine taking second place to the action. The opening scene of ’Last Frontier’ starts on the signals deck of the Hope, before moving to Mars-base One where the first super-science medical procedure is played out and incidentally, the hero is confronted with his primary challenge, a madman armed with a cobalt bomb who wants to leave the base and be taken down to what remains of Earth.
This meeting occurs at the start of the story's forth week and in the following days we see Hawke/Lance and a young nurse taken along as hostage through a number of tricky situations before the man is set down close to a small populated compound in the Sahara snowfields. And it is there that the man, confident of his safety so long as he has the bomb, dies at the hands of the very people he was trying to contact.
Though shorter than the stories we have come to expect from Sydney Jordan (many of his Jeff Hawke yarns ran for 12 to 16 weeks), Last Frontier gave us in just over eight weeks, all that was needed to give enough characterisation, atmosphere and action, to entice us to read the strip on every subsequent morning. What was to come was Angel of Mercy, the story of a beautiful android woman, created by an unknown race and apparently immortal.
The woman, Fortuna, named after the asteroid on which she was found is semi-bionic, possesses an organic brain intricately wired up to the body machine. In time, plots show that she has psi powers, something that becomes very valuable indeed, when later in the story she is able to pick up thought –waves from a fugitive human being on Earth, a man who is himself telepathic.
Longer than the first story, Angel of Mercy contains many haunting qualities and anticipates a future where bionic science can create artificial life and in Fortuna’s case produce a flawless humanoid imbued with ALL the attributes of a living breathing woman. Phew! All this and action too, handled in bravura style.